


Whirring

by Benzaiten (DaughterOfTheWest)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Awkward Romance, But I promise it's fluffy as hell, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of Anxiety, Mentions of medication, New York City, Oneshot, mentions of depression, therapystuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 14:50:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfTheWest/pseuds/Benzaiten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was happening. This wasn't a wet dream or a day dream or any kind of hallucination-- it wasn't, right? Pinch. Ouch. Nope. Definitely not a dream. Repeat, repeat, this is not a drill, this is not a drill--</p>
<p>This is a date.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(The fic that was inspiration for the Therapystuck universe!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whirring

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [(That Boy Needs Therapy)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/864853) by [Benzaiten (DaughterOfTheWest)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfTheWest/pseuds/Benzaiten), [Skylark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Skylark). 



> This was a flashfic I wrote during the HSWC that ended up inspiring the Therapystuck universe as seen in "(That Boy Needs Therapy)". This was written in response to pulling the song "Whirring" by The Joy Formidable for a song-prompt writing exercise, and takes a slightly different narrative approach to telling Dirk's story in that it focuses a lot more on exposition and has little dialogue. This is because "(TBNT)" was designed to challenge me to use more dialogue and not rely so much on telling details so much as letting the characters show them.
> 
> Anyway, Skylark was cleaning out our HSWC community and found it and asked me if I wanted to keep it, and of course I do! So here it is. I promise another chapter of TBNT is on it's way, even if I have been taking 5ever.

Holy fuck.

This was happening. This wasn't a wet dream or a day dream or any kind of hallucination-- it wasn't, right? Pinch. Ouch. Nope. Definitely not a dream. Repeat, repeat, this is not a drill, this is not a drill--

This is a date.

At twenty-two, Dirk was in a distinctive minority among males of his age. Not only was he a bachelor (nothing about that made him special, there were plenty of unattached men wandering around the streets of New York City) but he was also in the highest echelon of bachelordom. He might as well be the fucking president of the world's shittiest club: "SLULL"-- Sad Losers United in Lifelong Loneliness. Hello, my name is Dirk, and I'm all sorts of virgin. Hi Dirk.

Hell, he had never even gotten to first base.

It was his fault, really; you don't have to down a daily five-pill cocktail of antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds if you're anything resembling emotionally functional. Dirk could pick apart supercomputers and circuits and was a wunderkind with nanotechnologies, but perhaps his therapist was right in saying that he over-identifies with his machinery. Particularly, she marked with a 'tut', the way in which he found catharsis in ripping it to shreds.

Dirk wasn't really interested in dating, anyway. When anyone asked he shrugged or quipped it off, making a deadpan crack about actually being a robot or about readying himself to go into the seminary. When his brother tried to set him up with his best friend's sister (a lovely girl, sweet as her pastries and funny as all hell) he found himself making a friend that was distinctly platonic. That's how it usually went. He could find himself attracted to others, but there was nothing steamy about it-- no heat pooling in his gut when a woman would bat her eyelashes at him over the vinyl shine of his turntables, no undeniable desire to make out like the couples sucking face in the corner booths, not even a drive to have a one-night-stand with whatever solicitation inevitably came by the end of the night. When he was seventeen he had figured out that women just didn't do it for him, but that didn't mean anything changed, much. How could he even think about having a relationship with someone else while he was too busy waging wars against himself?

Was he the fox eschewing the sour grapes? No, of course not. Him? Never. Maybe. Probably.

There was a mind-heart disconnect he couldn't bridge. Yes, he had come to the conclusion there are very hot men in the world. Of course. But they were never real to him, they were other creatures; they were put together in ways he would never really understand. They weren't so emotionally and mentally eviscerated.

Well, fuck that analysis. He was a certifiable nutcase and a poor excuse for a human being and he had NO idea how this whole thing got started, but he knew where it was going next: it was going to a reservation at Nikko's, 8:00 sharp, with one stupidly sexy Australian named Jake English.

For a guy who graduated Magna Cum Laude at the University of Queensland (with a double-major in Robotics and Film), Jake had a surprising reputation for being an idiot. Well, maybe it wasn't all that surprising. The guy was a walking hurricane. Dirk had never seen someone so unaware of their body at all times-- English wasn't tall or unwieldy, had no easily-diagnosible inner-ear malfunctions-- and yet somehow was the most stupidly charming man to bumble into his workplace. Go figure. 

So here he was at 8:05pm EST, standing in the doorway of the restaurant dressed in an outfit picked out for him by Roxy ("it brings out the cokor of yr eyes. *color *your") and already convinced he had been stood up. Jake wasn't here. Five minutes had gone by. Wait-- six. English was six minutes late why the fuck was he late I mean if he didn't want to go out he didn't have to say yes in the first place--

"I found you!!"

Dirk's head whipped up and a lead weight dropped into his stomach. There was English in a loud hawaiian shirt and drenched from head to toe in summer rain (fuck were those actually his abs this can't be real), grinning with his big beaver teeth like he was a five-year-old going to Disneyland for the first time. At him.

Holy shit, Dirk Strider was actually on a date with Jake English. Right here. Right now.

Maybe he wasn't so fucked up, after all?


End file.
